1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an image forming apparatus, a host apparatus, and a print method thereof, and more particularly, to an image forming apparatus that performs a print operation on a plurality of sheets of print media, a host apparatus, and a print method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus forms a print image on a print medium (such as paper, a transparency, film, etc.). The image forming apparatus may be a printer, a photocopier, a facsimile, a multi function device, etc. To print or copy a plurality of sheets of print media from an image forming apparatus, an application (such as a printer driver of a host apparatus) or an operation of selecting the number of sheets of print media supported by the image forming apparatus is used.
Typically, however, a low-end image forming apparatus only provides an input button to perform minimal operations (such as “power on,” “start print,” “cancel,” “copy,” “copy 2 sheets of paper,” etc.) and a light emitting diode (LED) displaying a current status and error messages, without a user interface to select a number of sheets of print media.
Accordingly, to copy several sheets of paper from the low-end image forming apparatus, a user should select the number of sheets of print media through a host apparatus, press a copy button as many times as the number of sheets of print media to print or constantly press a copy-2-sheets of print media button, which causes inconvenience to a user. Meanwhile, the image forming apparatus performs a print operation until the number of sheets of printed print media reaches the selected number of sheets of print media if receiving a command of printing or copying data having a plurality of pages.
Here, if print media that is loaded in a tray is not sufficient to complete the print operation with respect to the selected number of sheets of print media, the image forming apparatus displays an error message corresponding to the insufficient print media to a user. If a user supplies print media, the image forming apparatus performs the print operation until the number of sheets of printed print media is the same as the selected number of sheets of print media.
Then, even if a user does not want to print any more, the print operation continues unless the print operation is cancelled through the image forming apparatus or the host apparatus. As a result, in some cases a user may be misled to believe that the print operation is completed and may not cancel a print operation even though the print operation is suspended because of insufficient print media. Thus, if a user loads print media in the tray to perform another print operation, the image forming apparatus resumes the previous print operation causing a waste of print media. Also, a user may be inconvenienced as the user should first cancel the previous print operation before loading sheets of print media.